The Police Authority. Department II (Political and Criminal Investigation Unit), Report by Constable Erxleben. Re: Observations Carried out in the Streets and Public Houses, Hamburg, October 1st, 1898

Source Description

This source is one of ca. 20,000 reports written by police spies about
conversations they overheard in Hamburg pubs and in
public spaces between the end of 1892 and the end of
1910.

When the Anti-Socialist Law The “Law against the Publicly Dangerous
Endeavors of Social Democracy,” [Sozialistengesetz] passed on October 19,
1878. was not renewed in 1890, the Hamburg senate began to fear
the Social Democratic labor movement and the outbreak of social revolt. As part
of a reorganization of Hamburg’s
police force following Prussia’s model in the
early 1890s, the
chief of the political
police succeeded in establishing a department for
gathering intelligence on the mood and political views among Hamburg’s workers and
craftsmen. The department consisted of six civil servants who visited Hamburg’s pubs, beer
halls, and streets disguised as workers in order to observe the conversations of
those present and subsequently write reports on them. The city was split into 16
observation districts, one of which was the dockland area called Billwerder Ausschlag.
Hamburg’s
political police reports on the mood of those
observed have been given little attention in historical scholarship for the most
part until historian
Richard J. Evans
reviewed and published a selection of them. They proved to be a trove of
archival material that is immensely informative with regard to the cultural
history and everyday life of workers, craftsmen, and the lower classes. This
1898 report written by
Constable
Erxleben sheds light on a common conversation
in which antisemitic
stereotypes are being evoked.